Dinner has a Cajun influence

We had a fun meal tonight as I decided to make something a little different and slightly indulgent for dinner.

Indulgent, in our case, meaning that we used rather a lot of bought, “exotic” vegetables instead of our home-grown ones.

As I had four of our home-made Vaguely Cajun sausages thawed for dinner, plus a couple of red peppers, a green pepper and a celery in the fridge, I decided to with the vaguely Cajun theme and make a collision between jambalaya and dirty rice.

I boiled the sausages for 10 minutes then, while they were cooking, diced two large onions, three peppers and two sticks of celery. I also peeled and diced a couple of garlic cloves.

I sauteed the vegetables - and a couple of vegetable sausages for the Other Half in another pan.

To the vegetables, I added a couple of teaspoons of paprika, a teaspoon of cumin, a teaspoon of diced thyme, a teaspoon of ground pepper and half a teaspoon of salt.

After frying the vegetables and spices for a couple of minutes I added half a can of tomatoes and half a dozen diced fresh tomatoes.

While this was cooking down, I drained the sausages and diced them, then diced the vegetable sausages. I also put a large cupful of rice on to boil.

I then removed three-quarters of the sauce to another pan and added the diced Vaguely Cajun sausages.

The diced vegetable sausages were added to the remaining sauce, along with a quarter teaspoon of cayenne and a good dash of Tabasco sauce.

When the rice was cooked, I added three quarters of it to the meat sauce and one quarter to the vegetarian sauce.

Both were stirred thoroughly and allowed to rest for five minutes before being served. I added a dash of Tabasco to mine as the meat version was made without too much spiciness to suit our two boys.

Regardless of final version, the meal was enjoyed by all and tomorrow it will back to our own fruit and vegetables again.

And no, no photos as the camera batteries were flat.